(C) Irving's suppression and manipulation of the Goebbels diary entry of 30 May 1942 and the table talk of 29 May 1942.

1. It is worth quoting Goebbels's diary entry of 30 May 1942, covering the events of the previous day, at some length:

I once more present the Führer with my plan to evacuate the Jews out of Berlin with none remaining. He is completely of my view, and gives Speer the order to ensure as quickly as possible that the Jews who are employed in the German armaments industry are replaced by foreign workers. I see a great danger in the fact that 40,000 Jews who have nothing more to lose find themselves at large in the capital city of the Reich. That is virtually a provocation and invitation to outrages. Once they break out, then one's life is no longer safe. The fact that even 22-year-old Eastern Jews took part in the latest firebomb attacks speaks volumes. Thus I plead once again for a more radical Jewish policy, whereby I am just pushing at an open door with the Führer. The Führer is of the opinion that the danger will become greater for us personally the more critical the war situation becomes. We find ourselves in a similar situation to that of the second half of 1932, where bashing and stabbing were the order of the day and one had to take all possible security measures to escape from subh a development in one piece.

The extermination of criminals is also a necessity of state policy. Should the war situation become very dangerous at any time, the prisons will have in any case to be emptied through liquidations, so that the danger does not arise of their one day opening their doors to let the revolting mob loose upon the people. The Führer once more explains his demand for the creation of an equilibrium between the loss of idealists and the lost of negativists. His proof is absolutely convincing...The penitentiaries do not have the task of preserving criminals for possible cases of revolt in wartime. What does it mean, besides, to proceed more rigorously and brutally against criminals, if one calls to mind the fact that in the past Winter they had a far better life than the three million soldiers on the Eastern Front! So we don't need to allow any false humanitarianism to reign here, but rather would do well to look things soberly in the eye and not allow ourselves to be influenced by any sentimentality...

I explain to the Führer how much more favourable the situation is today then in, say, 1917. At that time attempts at revolt were already beginning; a peace declaration was submitted in the Reichstag; the first munition workers' strikes were flaring up. There can be no talk of a similar situation today. The Führer answers to this, that the German workers are not thinking of stabbing him in the back. Every German worker today wants victory. If at some time we were in danger of losing the war, it would be precisely the German worker who would have to suffer most from it, and he would surely be filled with a deep sadness. The Germans only ever take part in subversive movements when the Jews seduce them into it. Therefore one must liquidate the Jewish danger, cost what it will. How little the Jews can assimilate themselves to West European life in reality can be seen from the fact that where they are put back into the ghetto they also become very quickly ghettoized again. West European civilisation just exists with them as an outer veneer. There are, to be sure, also elements among the Jews who go to work with a dangerous brutality and mania for revenge. Therefore the Führer also does not wish at all for the Jews to be evacuated to Siberia. There, under the harshest living conditions, they would undoubtedly form an element of vitality once more. He would rather settle them in central Africa. There they live in a climate that would surely not render them strong and capable of resistance. In any case it is the Führer's wish to make West Europe completely Jew -free. Here they will not be allow to ahve any home any more.1

2. The views which this diary entry expresses on the treatent of the Jews are somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, there was apparently rather open talk in the meeting about the murderous fate of the Jews. Hitler approved Goebbels' plan for a more radical policy, namely the 'evacuation' of all Berlin Jews. That 'evacuation' here apparently means extermination becomes clear in the sentence linking the fate of the Jews to criminals in state penal institutions (the extermination of certain criminal offenders got under way in the autumn of 1942, with Hitler's approval). These murderous intentions are also suggested later on in the diary entry, in the statement that the 'Jewish danger' had to be liquidated at all costs. On the other hand, Hitler also speaks vaguely about settling the Jews in Central Africa.

3. This apparent contradiction can be explained by a careful evaluation of the Goebbels diary entry and another contemporary document. The more explicit statements about the fate of the Jews ere made in a confidential meeting between Hitler and Goebbels (and possibly a few other leading figures of teh Third Reich), in which there was also a detailed talk about the German military campaign. By contrast, Hitler's vague statement about the settlement of Jews in Central Africa was made at his lunch table. Clearly, the diary entry of 30 May 1942 records two different conversations at wiich Goebbels was present in Hilter's company in the course of teh previous day. This is confirmed by the record of Hitler's table talk on 29 May 1942:

The boss remarked at lunch that according to reports on his desk, the Jewish police in the ghettos were lashing out at their co-religionists to a degree which our police scarcely dared even in the worst fighting periods of our party comrades. The whole crudity of the Jewish being really finds expression there. It is of further interest that the so-called highly-educated Jews such as doctors, lawyers and so on, who have long been active in West European cities, have hardly been in the ghetto for a fortnight before they have become completely ghettoised and go around in caftans and the like. There could scarcely be a clearer proof that the Jew in the end is an Asiatic and not a European. So the whole of Europe must be completely Jew-free after a definite time. That is necessary if only because there is always a certain percentage of fanatics amongst the Jews, who seek to raise Jewry up again. Therefore the deportation of the Jews to Siberia is not recommended, since with their reistance to the climate their health would only be particularly toughened-up there. It would be much more correct to transport them to Africa, since the Arabs don't want them in Palestine, and thus to expose them to a climate which impairs every human's capacity to resist and thus excludes any conflict of interest with human beings in Europe.

After a reference to the fact that Japan too is going about exterminating the Jews who have slithered into Japan through trade with America, the boss explained that at some point the Jew would have the whole world as his enemy. Even a country like the United Stated
[sic]
(USA), in which - to use a metaphor - he is maintaining himself through his continual somersaults, astonishing to everybody, will notice him and fight him when he no longer posesses the necessry vigour for somersaulting. Then there will be a sudden end to Jewish casuistry there too.2

4. Leaving aside Hitler's cynical claims about the life of Jews in the Eastern ghettos, it is very likely that his vague reference to settling Jews in Africa was simiply intended to deceive his listeners. Hitler used this tactic repeatedly in order to avoid uncomfortable discussions at his lunch or dinner table. Indeed, reading the record of the table talk in conjunction with the Goebbels diary entry discussed above illustrates the point that the Nazi leaders spoke in more concrete terms about the true fate of the Jews while amongst themselves, while they often remained more guarded in front of their wider entourage.

5. In view of the open talk about extermination in hte cnfidential conversations between Hitler and Goebbels on 29 May 1942 (as recorded in the Goebbels diary the following day), it beggars belief that David Irving claims that this diary entry indicates that the 'ghastly secrets of Auschwitz and Treblinka were well kept' from Hitler. 3 He can only do this by manipulating the Goebbels diary entry for 29 May 1942, as the following extract from Hilter's War (1991) shows:

The gulf between the acutal atrocities in the east, and what Hitler know or said about them widened...Goebbels, unhappy that forty thousand Jews still remained un "his" Berlin, raised the subject at lunch with Hitler on the twenty-ninth [of May]. ("I once again inform the Führer on my plan to evacuate every singel Jew from Berlin...") Hitler merely expatiated on the best post-war homeland for the Jews. Siberia was out - that would just produce an even tougher bacillus strain of Jews; Palestine was out too - the Arabs did not want them; perhaps central Africa? At all events, he summed up, western Europe must be liberated of its Jews - there could be no homeland for them there.4

Irvings account here draws on both the table talk of 29 May 1942 and the Goebbels diary entry of the folowing day. However, in order to present Hilter as ignorant about the true fate of the Jews, Irving simply suppresses the crucial reference to the apparent plan to exterminate the Berlin Jews as well as the statement that the 'Jewish danger' had to be liquidated at all cost. In addition, Irving suppresses that Hitler was in full agreement with Goebbels about the need to 'evacuate' the Jews from Berlin, as is evident in Hitler's immediate orders to Speer to this effect.